From PeteF Douglas' Shallows - Raft Ranger Messing About with Boat (40 points?)

For the penultimate stop on Challenge Island I was going to do three 3-D printed rafts for use in the Rebels & Patriots river chase scenario. Unfortunately my friend's 3-D printer gave up the ghost after one raft, so for this location I have boat rather than boats to mess around with.

The 3-D file came free from Thingiverse and the designer did a great job with it. There's an alternate version with a small sail which I'll use for one of the other rafts when the printer is well again. The chest is integral to the print and adds some interest.

I tried a new technique for the wood using artists acrylic and a weathered wood medium. The whole thing was painted with a greyish driftwood colour, then the medium, then a burnt umber. As it dried it cracked - giving a more natural effect. I'm calling the result good enough for wargaming.

To make up for the lack of boats I painted a ranger to go on the raft. She is a Sisterhood Scout from Mantic's Kings of War/Vanguard Basilean's faction. I'm thinking of using this green/yellow colour scheme for a wood-elfy SAGA Age of Magic faction.  I tried more contrast/shading on the cloak than I usually manage - what do you think - could I go further? Should the final highlight be grey rather than lime green?

Not sure how to score the raft - if it's a vehicle it would be 20 points but if terrain then more like 5. 5 for the ranger and 30 for the new location - I'll leave final judgement to the minion of the day.

From DaveD - Thats a fine creation alright i will go with 40 points

From PhilH: Boring Boat at Douglas’ Shallows (35 Points)

A shameless points grab for my canter around the island, with a mysterious boat I found fully prepped and undercoated in one of my many ‘in progress’ boxes.

It had a mast with it but no sail. I forgot to photograph the mast, so it can be a rowboat for now.

Pass on the manufacturer or where it came from. I don’t even have a river or coast in my terrain collection as yet, so it can go live in another box for a while.

To be honest, I feel embarrassed to claim this as a 28mm vehicle, as it took me half an hour or so. Shall we call it 5 points? Plus 30 for the location, of course.

Getting there...but is there still time to reach the peak?

From DaveD... I have a few of those lying around - It looks like one of the Ainsty..- ok lets go with that score

From Barks: Sampans at Douglas' Shallows (58 points)

Sarah's Balloon drops me off over the delta as Ride of the Valkyries crackles from her gramophone.

These 15mm sampans are from Flashpoint Miniatures. They are resin boats with metal crew, and were not my favourite things to assemble. They will help set the scene on the tabletop.

2x 15mm boats ?16 points

6x 15mm crew 12 points

Douglas' Shallows 30 points

Nice little boats, but it sounds like they were a beast to work with.  The end result is really nice and would work for Vietnam, colonials, pulp gaming or James Bond stuff (Man With the Golden Gun anyone?). One never knows what is lurking in those sampans.

 I agree with treating the sampans as vehicles giving you 58 points.  And its' a very worthy entry for my Shallows.
PeterD

From Curt: Thornycroft LCA for Douglas' Shallows (50 Points)

For 'Douglas' Shallows' I offer a 1:50 scale Thornycroft landing craft (LCA).

The Thornycroft LCA was designed in 1938 after it became clear to the British that war with German had only been delayed, not forestalled. The Imperial General Staff desired a craft that could carry a platoon of men, have a low profile, be quiet on approach and be able to land their payload in 18 inches of water. After rigorous trials it was determined that the Thornycroft design was the best fit. It was made primarily of mahogany and had two 65hp engines, allowing it to make headway at 6kt fully loaded.

Canadians and the Thorycroft LCA have a tragic association with both being involved in the August 1942 Dieppe raid fiasco. I have a personal connection with the Dieppe operation as two men from my home town were members of the South Saskatchewan Regiment which landed at Green Beach on that day. 

Due to navigational errors, the South Saskatchewans were set down on the wrong side of the River Scie and became bottled up by machine gun and mortar fire at the foot of its only bridge crossing. Their commanding officer, Charles Merritt, led his men across the bridge under heavy fire and then proceeded to knock out several pillbox positions on the other side. Nonetheless, the battalion was forced back to the beach, and with their defensive perimeter closing in, Merritt decided to stay with the rearguard and the wounded. They fought until out of ammunition and then surrendered. Merritt was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions that day.

I was generously given two(!) Thornycrofts by Alf at Barrage Miniatures when we visited Madrid a few years ago. They are very nice resin models, meticulously scaled to 28mm figures (yes, Nick, I believe Alf said it was built to 1/48 to 1/50 scale). ;)

On top of the excellent casting, Alf created an ingenious way to display the boat with its loading ramp up or down by utilising two separate prow inserts. The inserts are very robust and look great.

A fairly quick paintjob, I've done it up in a three tone camo, common to that early period of the war. From what I understand, the boat identifiers for the Dieppe operation were hand-painted in red and so I've tried to copy a similar style here.

I did a bit of archival sleuthing and found a list of all the LCAs that were lost at Dieppe and found a few images to correlate to them. Here is one image of LCA 215, which from the position of the photo places it at Red Beach (you can see one of the abandoned Churchills behind it and the town's seawall further in the distance). 

LCA 215 grounded at Dieppe.

As to points I suggest simply scoring the Thornycoft as a 28mm vehicle. With the 30 points of Douglas's Shallows that should give me 50 points to add to my tally.

-Curt

From DaveD - that a nice piece MrC , the camo gives it a nice bit of something extra - 50 pts it is

From MikeW - 17th Century Landing Craft! (40 Points)

Having meandered around Challenge Island, I found my-self at Douglas' Shallows and needing to do something faintly nautical...

... being a land lubber that posed a bit of a problem - until I realised that one of the Scenarios that I have been hoping to put on as a game at the SAS Wargames Club  was a 17th Century Amphibious Landing - and I need some suitable barges to offload the invading forces.

As an aside - the SAS in the club name does not refer to the famous British Special Ops Regiment, rather it originally stood for Sussex Association of Simulators and later Southern Association of Simulators, in more recent times it has stood for Sussex and Surrey! 

Thus reflecting English counties our members are from... we also have a member who lives in Somerset, but as that begins with a 'S' as well he's still allowed in!

Back to Douglas' Shallows, next I had to source an appropriate number of barges, I did briefly consider scratch building them but after a browse on eBay I found a set of barges from AnyScaleModels.com that would do just nicely and they were really good value for money.

5 x 28mm Landing Barges

The models duly arrived and I proceeded to undercoat the resin models with a Grey Primer spray, once dry I painted the outside of the boats / barges brown and then highlighted and applied washes to give a natural wooden feel, before varnishing.

The inside of the boats were painted grey, then again highlighted and washed to give the models a more 3D visual when on the table top.

Close-up view of Barge - which could equally be used as a ferry

The resin models were well cast and had very little flash that needed to be cleaned-up, in a couple spots near the water line I left some of the flash in place and painted this blue with white highlights to give a hint of water.

Another view, highlighting grey interior

As to the scenario I plan to use, it is based on one by Barry Hilton and is the Battle of Camaret Bay, 18th June 1694, when a British and Allied force landed outside Brest, France only to find their mission compromised and they were thrown back into the sea....

And finally in action, transporting a regiment of
English Foot, spread across two barges!

Not sure on how to score the Barges, they are approx 14.5cm (6") x 5cm (2") so have assumed that they are equivalent to a 28mm mounted figure so 10 Points each. Treating them as 28mm vehicles @ 20 Points each, seems a little over generous...

POINTS
5 x 28mm Barges @ 5 Points each = 50 Points
Douglas' Shallows Bonus  30 Points
Total Points 50 + 30 = 80 Points

By Paul:
They look very handy bits of kit indeed - would love some of those for my FIW chaps doing some river assaults.

Happy with your map location bonus but noting their construction, painting requirements and lack of basing I am going to score the boats as terrain to maintain consistency.  Overall in volume I shall round up to half a terrain cube for 10 points, making a total of 40.

Good luck messing about in your boats

From MattK - Tiny Romans, Lord of the Rings Reinforcement and Messing About With Boats - Douglas Shallows(121 Points)

So, I've run into a bit of a prediciment admitedly. I have been working hard on two other larger projects and wanted to wait until they were done to post again but I realised I was sitting on a pretty big backlog if I did that so here is a smattering of whats been totally finished since last time. I'm really enjoying my time on the island but I'll admit it's changing up the order in which I'd post some stuff. Perhaps after this post I'll take a trip on Sarah's Balloon.

Firstly, according to the title are my new 10mm Romans. These figures are from Old Glory and are the very first batch I've painted for my eventual Age of Hannibal Game. Sometime between now and the actual Age of Hannibal game, I plan to make some lists up and use the figures to run tiny adorable kitchen table games of To the Strongest. These are all the Velites I'll need and the first two bases of Princepes. The basing was done for the sake of simplicity. 2 strips means I can get whole units from one bag of figures and easily represent different troop types.

Next up more Lord of The Rings. This is a very simple addition to my collection. We've been playing Battle Companies and this week our Dwarf Players (aside from winning both of his games so far) is up another Dwarf warrior and managed to snag the Mirkwood location. I told the players in the campaign that I'd supply everything we needed within reason and honestly, I didn't want to run out and buy a whole box of Mirkwood Rangers. I did however have a half dozen Legolas figures I've collected over the years (with the mounted version coming in the mail soon) Anyway this seemed like a good escuse to get him painted so I painted the 3 Hunters version. No clue when Ill paint the Aragorn and Gimli in that set but I suppose this is progress. So, a Dwarf Warrior and a "Mirkwood Ranger"

Finally, you were promised boats. As I mentioned before, I have a generic "red" navy and a generic "blue" one. My landfall onto the island saw the first batch of Roman ships so today, the entire Carthaginian fleet for my Poseidon's Warriors game. These were more 3d printed ships. This is my entry for Douglas' Shallows as I think we can consider raising a whole navy for Carthage "messing about with boats"

This puts me here for the challenge island with just one spot left to go before I can climb the mountain.

Glad to be back in the swing of it.

Today's totals
45 10mm infantry = 45 points
2 28mm infantry = 10 points
12 1/600 scale boats = 36 points (looks like I was given 3 points each last time)
Douglas' Shallows Bonus = 30 points
For a grand total of 121

Marvellous all round. Love te 10mm Romans, I have a bit o a soft spot for 10mm and they are big this year on the Challenge. Reinforcements always help - as Timur the Lame said "Better to be on hand with 10 men than absent with 10,000". And the Carthaginian fleet is marvellous (did you print these yourself?)

From MartinC - All Together Now - Douglas Shallows (120pts)

TRA LA LA

 LA LA LA LA

TRA LA LA

LA LA LA LA

TRA LA LA

 LA LA LA LA

TRA LA LA

LA LA LA LA

One Banana

Two Bananas

Three Bananas

Four

All bananas make a split so do many more

Over hill and highway the banana buggies go

Come along to bring you the banana splits show

Four banana three banana two banana one

All bananas playing in the bright warm sun

Flipping like a pancake popping like a cork

Fleagle

Bingo

Drooper

and Snork

Confused, then you are younger than 50. The Banana Splits Showe was big when I was a very young child and it had the best theme song 

It was so good there was even a punk version by the Dickies

The Banana Splits drove 6 wheeled amphibious Argacats (which were a nightmare to paint - yellow, orange and white are rubbish colours to use and black lines are spectacularly unforgiving) and they will allow me to mess about in the Douglas Shallows.

These figures are from Crooked Dice and called The Friut Loops

So that is 4x28mm vehicles and drivers = 90pts plus 30 for the location

Right now I expect you all to be able to sing all the words so go back to the top and practice

From DaveD - I know song that will on your nerves... get on your nerves. You are a bad man..Cracking job on these Martin - I look forward to seeing them on our Gaslands track... mind my version will have a lot more firepower mmmwahaha!

120 POINTS IT IS!

From ByronM: Steaming through Douglas' Shallows (47 points)

Well, it took a while but I finally found a way to get across the Douglas Shallows, a shallow-hulled Dwarf steamship!  For something nautical to match the requirements of the map space I once again dug into my copy of Dreadfleet that has been sitting waiting to be painted for way too many years.

The ship itself is very stereo-typically dwarf, it is stout, heavy, and likely a bit slow.

To make up for a bit of the ship's slowness it employs scouting air ships so that it can spot and target enemies at range.  The game provides a deployed air ship, and you can see there is a second in the actual paddle wheel ship.

These were once again painted in a very plain and dwarfy style, meaning lots of metal!  There are some wood features picked out just to add some warmed colours to the model along the rails, but it is mainly multiple silvers and golds, then just washed and re-highlighted.

For points this is similar sized to the Dwarf submarine, so I would assume similar points (15), but there is really no set scale for me to reference this against for a set point score, so whatever is good.  In addition it is for my next map space, so a bonus 30 points there, for a total of 45.

I may be back again later to my copy of Dreadfleet, as the ships look so much better painted, and the others are getting jealous in the box.

***

Well done Byron - as a Dwarf ship, I assume it has other Dwarf characteristics as well - lots of guns, lots of metal, and never shows up or actually contributes anything useful to its side in the game? 

The results are excellent as usual Byron - and the water effects on the base finish it off perfectly. Are the bases already textured, or is that something you did on your own?  Certainly the overall effect is fantastic, a fitting means to travel Douglas' Shallows. For points, I will toss in a couple of extra for the little flying contraption.

Your notion of unpainted figures becoming jealous is a bit terrifying, I expect, for many of us...for my part, I am now imagining half a legion of angry unpainted Space Marines in my basement getting tired of my recent "historical" painting and becoming angry...if they teamed up with my wife, that would be it for me...

GregB

From StuartL - Challenge Island Safari Journal - 4th Jan

Welcome back fellow C.I.S.T.ers, sadly our first foray into the Island ran into a spot of bother. So at the moment we are fleeing rapidly away from Cook's Crevase and it's rather hungry looking Ogre population. Sadly I think the Ogre's are gaining on us, they must have gotten a real energy boost after snacking on our baggage camels. Thankfully, to avoid just this type of situation, the Challenge Island Safari Company employs the services of numerous warriors and retainers and one of them is on his way to deal with our little Ogre problem.

One of our highly trained Ashigaru warriors is more than capable of taking down an Ogre or two and no C.I.S.T.er should be without one. In fact, this fellow here will be accompanying one lucky tourist home (assuming that he doesn't get squished or eaten before that).

While I have full confidence in the ability of our plucky rescuer here, perhaps it would be better if everyone hopped in the boat, just in case. Thankfully the coastline around Douglas' Shallows is dotted with small boats and fishing vessels. And, to paraphrase a famous philosopher, “there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply escaping from hungry ogres in a boat”.

I'm sure the fisherman won't mind if we borrow this for a while. All aboard!

And away we go. Luckily Ogres can't swim. At least, I hope they can't. So, we may have lost all of our baggage and several of our slower members, but at least we get to enjoy this scenic view of the island's coast and, provided we can start a fire when we land, a meal of fresh fish.

----------------

As hinted at above, the Ashigaru figure will be given to one fellow explorer of Challenge Island. The mini is from Kensei by Zenit miniatures.

The boat is from Reaper and was mainly painted with drybrushing and washes. The same model of boat has appeared earlier in the challenge and scored 20 points as a 28mm scale vehicle. 

So, by my count I make it 5 Points for the Ashigaru, plus 25 Points as it is an entry fee mini, 20 for the Boat and 30 for the location. That gives me a grand total of 80 I think.

****
What a great entry Stuart, I love the evolving story of your trip across challenge island, it is much better than my bubbling around on it.

The figures look great, especially the boat which I really like (and may have to pick one up).

Your math also looks good, so away you go with 80 points!

- Byron